


The Troubled Plumes of Midnight

by Scruggzi



Series: The Devil's Own Brigade [1]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Angst, Dream Sequence, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, biJack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 16:43:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14698233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scruggzi/pseuds/Scruggzi
Summary: Phryne and Jack are estranged following the events of Blood at the Wheel, but he can't keep her out of his dreams...Written as a companion peace to With Such a Wistful Eye for the May Quote Fic challenge for the prompt:"We should meet in another life. We should meet in the air, you and I."





	The Troubled Plumes of Midnight

The dream started the way they all did. With Phryne Fisher. He may have walked away from their partnership but he could not keep her out of his subconscious any more than he could keep her out of his heart.

She was sitting on his desk, wearing nothing but red lipstick and a satisfied smile.

“Did you miss me, Jack?”

“How can I when you never leave?” He could hear the petulance in his own voice and hated it.

She was no longer naked, the dun coloured duster she habitually wore during investigations covered her body, her bare feet still swinging over the edge of the desk. There was blood, spattered across it and the white of her skin but he couldn’t see a wound.

“I’m still here,” she slipped off the table, looking down at him from what was suddenly a far greater height than she should have. “Do you really want me to go?”

He nodded unable to speak.

She shrugged, spun round, the whirl of the coat becoming fur and feathers as she sashayed through the open door to the bullpen.

“No problem, Inspector. I’ll just have to find a way around you.” Her tone was defiant but hurt. Some part of her did care—he was sure—in her own way.

He rose from the chair, finally able to move as she left, running after her without knowing why or to what purpose.

The bullpen was gone, replaced by a long corridor that became increasingly muddy, until he found himself once again back on the Western Front; the scent of cordite was in the air, he was in uniform, gun and gasmask hanging from his shoulder, blood on his hands.

He could still hear her; the tinkle of laughter was coming from just around the next bend in the trench.

Of course, she was here. It was dangerous here, where else would she be? Besides, this was where the people he had lost lived. For the most part. It was his fault, he had never meant to send her back here.

He needed to find her.

The shelling started before he could turn the corner. Clouds of gas bloomed across his vision; he hacked a cough and brought the mask up to his face. The murk made it almost impossible to see anything, he nearly tripped over her body when he found it.

Someone had given her a gas mask. He knew, with the ontological certainty of dream logic, that it had been Alex. She was still breathing.

Jack woke in a cold sweat, shaking in Rosie’s arms. The bed they had shared was long since sold, the house too. It didn’t matter. She held him close, stroking his hair until his breathing steadied. The look on her face when he sat up was filled with pity, the kindly but detached sympathy of a stranger. It cut deeper than anger, or recrimination ever could have.

“Will you be going to the station?” she asked, disinterested, polite.

“I just came from there.”

“Well you can’t stay here Jack, you don’t live here anymore, the new owners will be arriving any minute.” She gestured towards the bedroom door, the one that would lead out towards the hallway. “Go on, you don’t want to be late for your shift.”

He nodded, struggling to rise, he was still wearing his suit and overcoat and they were tangling in the bedclothes. Rosie watched him impassively and did not kiss him goodbye.

The door to the hallway led to no man’s land; mud and barbed wire under a silent, grey sky. It was deserted, no sign of the enemy, no sign of his friends.

“Alex?” He would be out there somewhere, and if he had given Phryne his mask he could be hurt. “ _Alex!?”_

Fear was clawing at Jack’s gut, dragging him down like the mud clinging to his coat as he struggled across the treacherous ground. He could see corpses, half hidden amongst filth and chaos, neither Alex nor Phryne were amongst them, these were old bodies, decayed, barely recognisable as human.

His head whipped round at the roar of an engine, his first though being that a bombing raid was about to commence. Against his will, his heart lifted when he saw the car – the poppy-red of the Hispano Suiza shone bright as the blood of life against the dull grey-brown of the landscape. He made for it, no longer caring that they were not on speaking terms. Phryne had come for him, she would give him a ride back to his office, they could find Alex. It was a cold case for sure but they worked well together.

Had worked well together.

She was slumped over the wheel, neck snapped, blood marring her pale skin. He screamed his grief to the empty battlefield.

And woke up.

He was back in bed, in the house he had shared with Rosie, but Rosie was gone. Yet he wasn’t alone.

Alex was there, his grubby brown hair sticking up at odd angles in the way that always infuriated the officers. He was watching Jack with gentle, understanding eyes, the hazel flecked with living green where the light caught it. Just as Jack remembered. Just as he had tried so hard to forget.

Alex reached out a hand and his fingers were warm against Jack’s cheek, which was odd, the dead were supposed to be cold. Still, at least he was safe here. Jack had been worried about him.

“You’ve been making a right fucking mess of things, Jack.” the man said, fondly, sweeping the hair from his lover’s forehead, a tender, reassuring gesture that Jack couldn’t help but take comfort in.

“She made a fool of me. It was my fault. I saw it coming. I should have put a stop to things long before now.”

Alex shook his head with a knowing smile and pressed a soft, affectionate kiss to Jack’s lips, he tasted of tobacco. Their bodies were pressed together in the bed and Jack realised for the first time that they were naked, but the energy between them was one of comfort, not passion. It was not one of those dreams. He pulled away and laid his head on Alex’s chest, felt the warmth of strong arms around him, allowed himself to be to be loved.

“You would never have done that.” He murmured into his dead friend’s chest.

“Died? I can’t agree with you there, mate. Besides, she’s not dead. Trust me, I’m a fucking, expert.”

As always, Alex had no patience with Jack’s tendency to obfuscate and he had never been one to let him sulk. Jack grumbled, too comfortable to complain about the accuracy of those words.

“I can’t do this again.” Jack confessed, not meeting Alex’s eyes.

“I don’t know, Jack. You’re not dead either, no use acting like it.”

“Humph.”

Even in dreams Jack was not yet ready to concede that point. He stilled against Alex’s chest, slowly breathing him in as his sleep descended into the warm, unconscious dark.

He woke in an armchair in the quiet of his bungalow, with tears still pricking the corners of his eyes. He had not thought of Alex in years, had put those ghosts and regrets, such as they were, behind him. It had never been more than a dream even when the man lived, and a dream he would never be able to share with anyone.

Not unlike his current predicament.

He downed the half-finished glass of whiskey he had left on the table beside the chair, shaking off his melancholy as best he could.

Perhaps in another life.

He shuffled unsteadily to his bedroom and collapsed, still dressed onto the covers and when he woke in the morning with a dry mouth and pounding head, perfect for a day at work, he did not remember his dreams at all.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote a post S3 story in which Jack comes out to Phryne and shares the story of how he had once fallen for another man - something he had never been able to talk about with anyone else. Alex McGuff was a soldier from Jack's unit, chain smokes, swears a lot and doesn't take Jack's shit. He probably deserved a better ending than the one I gave him.
> 
> The titles, and the series title are taken from Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol 
> 
> https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/ballad-reading-gaol


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